Pulp Fiction

PULP FICTION (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)

PULP FICTION’s violence, non-linear structure, retro soundtrack, pop culture references, and overall hip factor are what have lingered in the collective memory, but revisiting Quentin Tarantino’s film twenty years after its debut is to rediscover a work whose maker is deliriously in love with the cinema and words. Although peppered with allusions to plenty of films and television shows, such verbal and visual citations are seasoning for the main course.

PULP FICTION is built upon monologues and conversations whose profane musicality engages the characters in lingual dances. Discussions revolve around mundane but humorous things as the differences between fast food item names in the United States and Europe, the intimacy of a foot massage, and the cowardice involved in keying a car, but the actors savor the rich language as though performing Shakespeare.

Told out of sequence, the interconnected stories focus on the criminal underworld in Los Angeles. Gangsters Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) procure a suitcase for their boss Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames) but face obstacles delivering it. Boxer Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) wins a fight he promised to throw but risks skipping town safely by returning home to get a cherished keepsake. At his boss’s request Vincent takes Marsellus’s wife Mia (Uma Thurman) out on the town knowing that a previous acquaintance who got close to her paid a serious price.

Tarantino’s reputation for presenting graphic violence, especially early in his career, exceeded what actually is seen on screen. Perhaps more than anything else, his ability to get a rise out of audiences with what they think they saw, paired with the skill of editor Sally Menke, may be the greatest demonstration of his talent. The notorious scene with the adrenaline shot to the heart never shows the needle being jammed through Mia’s breast plate. The discussion leading up to the act; seven tightening close-ups, including one of the dripping needle; a wide shot of Vincent bringing his arm down; and a thump as Mia jerks awake in close-up give a vivid impression without depicting the forceful injection.

Tarantino’s adeptness with humorous dialogue and mise en scene shouldn’t overshadow his handling of actors. This was Travolta’s comeback role, and he gives a performance that finds him charming and funny, not to mention the delightful moment when PULP FICTION pauses to recall his cinematic past by having him do the twist with Thurman. Jules is probably Jackson’s defining role. He’s playing more than just an intimidating enforcer. Jackson is fearsome when he’s marking his territory and bellowing Jules’ corruption of a verse from Ezekiel. He’s amusing shooting the breeze with a friend and co-worker who he likely thinks he’s a bit smarter than. As the film’s femme fatale Thurman displays her strength with how she lures Vincent into her domain and flirts aggressively without being too obvious for anyone who might be observing them.

PULP FICTION wielded massive influence and imitators, yet watching it again for the first time in years it still seems fresh. Those who tried to duplicate it took all of the wrong lessons.

Grade: A

The Expendables 2

THE EXPENDABLES 2 (Simon West, 2012)

When the stars of yesteryear lose their luster, it’s common for them to keep working and try to remain relevant by parodying themselves, sometimes to the point of debasement. The faded action heroes in THE EXPENDABLES 2 aren’t making mockeries of themselves for the general public’s amusement, but they’re toeing that line when Chuck Norris turns up essentially to play along with his own meme.

The group of mercenaries led by Sylvester Stallone’s Barney Ross are persuaded once again by CIA operative Mr. Church (Bruce Willis) to do a job for him and to include Maggie (Yu Nan), one of his own personnel, on their crew.  This time the Expendables, including Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), Gunnar Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), and newcomer Billy the Kid (Liam Hemsworth), are dispatched on a recovery mission in Albania’s Gazak Mountains.  

They retrieve the desired item but are forced to hand it over when Jean Vilaine (Jean-Claude Van Damme) and his men intercept them.  Vilaine gives them reason enough to want to hunt him down before Maggie reveals that they’ve given him a map to the hidden location of five tons of plutonium.

The makers of THE EXPENDABLES 2 can claim to have given audiences what they want.  You want action stars, you got ‘em.  In addition to the primary cast of Stallone, Statham, Lundgren, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, and young blood Hemsworth, also on hand to get their hands dirty are Willis, Norris, Van Damme, Jet Li, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Scott Adkins.  Looking for numerous action scenes?  Here you go.

At issue, though, is that most of the biggest names are present for what amount to glorified cameos.  Schwarzenegger and Willis get to do more than they did in the first film, but they’re hardly reliving their glory days in the genre.  Director Simon West doesn’t skimp on shootouts, which would be all well and good if they weren’t spatially incoherent and nonsensically cut.  A brief sequence of Jet Li battering baddies with pans is more pleasing to follow than all of the time in which shots are held for about as long as heavy artillery can fire off a few rounds.

THE EXPENDABLES 2 isn’t a parody, yet it doesn’t help its cause naming the villain Vilaine.  The oldies on the soundtrack are reminiscent of what scores erectile dysfunction pill ads.  One-liners like “rest in pieces” and “I now pronounce you man and knife” are artlessly added and overused.  The movies that many of these guys made in the 1980s and ‘90s were hardly bulletproof, but this is a cynical exercise in settling for what is expected to be passable. THE EXPENDABLES 2 doesn’t give the impression that anyone is making a serious effort, not when they can coast on nostalgia.

Grade: C-

Cop Out

COP OUT (Kevin Smith, 2010)

The action-comedy COP OUT features Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan as longtime mismatched partners working for the NYPD. Following in the footsteps of many other movie cops, the duo makes some major mistakes that lead to their suspension. Jimmy Monroe (Willis) fritters away his time worrying about how to pay for his daughter's wedding while Paul Hodges (Morgan) obsesses over suspicions that his wife is cheating on him with their neighbor. When Willis is robbed of a highly valuable baseball card he planned to sell to pay for his little girl's big day, he and Morgan set out in hot pursuit of the thief.

With COP OUT director Kevin Smith of CLERKS fame attempts to make his version of a 1980s buddy cop comedy. To make the concept more obvious, COP OUT even comes with a synthesizer-heavy score by Harold Faltermeyer, who's best known for composing and performing "Axel F" from BEVERLY HILLS COP. Smith didn't write the screenplay, although his likely influence on it can still be found in his signature foul-mouthed, pop culture referencing dialogue. Even if many of the jokes in COP OUT aren't all that funny, Smith's facility with crude wordplay is what he salvages from this huge mess of a film.

Morgan's energy and cheerful idiocy help to sell the flat verbal and visual jokes more than they probably deserve. Whether he's chasing a drug dealing gang member while dressed as a giant cell phone or delighting in his videotaped failure being a viral hit, Morgan strikes the right tone. He and Willis don't generate any comedic chemistry, though.

Smith is less adept in guiding COP OUT'S serpentine crime investigations along and shooting the action scenes. He's never been known as a visually dynamic director, and his clumsiness in camera set-ups and movements hamper anything that isn't joke-oriented. COP OUT isn't top shelf material, so it's not as though Smith's limitations drag it down. Nevertheless, his skill set is not the right match. Dare I say that Michael Bay, who seems to fashion himself as something of a comedy filmmaker, might have served the screenplay better?

Grade: C-

Surrogates

SURROGATES (Jonathan Mostow, 2009)

In the futuristic world of SURROGATES, most people stay at home and mentally control human-looking androids that they send out to work and play. Since it's rare for people to leave their private spheres, crime has plummeted.

If a surrogate is damaged in any way, the operator remains unharmed. Or at least that's always been the case until cop Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) discovers that two operators died when their surrogates were attacked and terminated. The possibility that users can be harmed through their surrogates threatens to upend civilization's current way of functioning.

SURROGATES establishes an intriguing premise for exploring a world in which virtual life trumps physical reality, but the thematic potential is squandered in favor of a by-the-numbers police procedural. Who's responsible for murdering people through their surrogates is much less interesting than thinking about technological innovations and the foreseen and unexpected social and ethical implications they can have on society.

In SURROGATES who one can be depends on the mechanical avatar chosen to represent oneself. But what are the costs of putting forth a false or idealized image and withdrawing from an existence outside one's home? SURROGATES is a movie that has a lot on its mind but chooses the least compelling aspect to focus on.

I've read nothing to suggest that the film was tampered with in the editing room, but SURROGATES has the marks of a movie that's been oversimplified due to a studio's lack of confidence in its complexity. Most noticeably, the surrogate resistance movement gets short shrift when it would seem to be critical to digging into the film's themes.

The sleek visual texture and rich thematic potential make director Jonathan Mostow's inability to corral the ideas all the more disappointing. Technology often moves faster than society can deal with the moral quandaries it creates. SURROGATES poses some provocative questions. If only it had debated them.

Grade: C